As a live-music fan, something funny I realized about planning a wedding is that the wedding ceremony is the “opening act” of the day. The ritual binding of you to someone for eternity, amidst the hoopla that is the wedding day, is the appetizer. It’s the biggest part of the day only to those on stage or those directly related to those on stage. A wedding ceremony is, ironically enough, a lot like the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

Jimi Hendrix? Let me explain where I’m going.

Hendrix achieved fame in 1967 at the seminal acid-rock event known as the Monterey Pop Festival. (Remember footage of Hendrix on his knees stoking the flames of a burning guitar? It happened at there.) Hendrix and his band opened for the only act to ever record four number-one albums in a single year: the artistic juggernauts and the ’60s cultural icons known as the Monkees.

Kristin and I were standing on the grounds of a tranquil little wedding venue, with a great outdoor setting situated on the banks of the Potomac, when I realized a jumbo jet was screaming toward us. I could see the people on the plane putting up their tray tables, the heat coming off the engines, and rivets. Looking across the water from the back porch of the establishment, I watched as a massive 767 touched down at Reagan National Airport no more than 500 yards away. I turned to Kristin and said, “Tower, this is Ghost Rider requesting a flyby.” To which she responded, “That’s a negative Ghost Rider. The pattern is full. We’re planning a wedding, honey, not an air show.”

Finding a venue got off to a rocky start. Besides the landing strip, we also had an establishment at National Harbor that wouldn’t call us back and a place in Dupont Circle where the event coordinator stood us up. At one hotel, the salesperson showed us a room that was way too small for the number of guests we were planning to invite. We had to sneak into the joint late one night and find a ballroom that was large enough.

One of my favorite Beltway tales of government spending run amok is the story of the Navy’s $600 toilet seat. At the end of the Cold War, the Navy commissioned upgrades on a fleet of aircraft. As part of the revamp, the contractor looked at the jet’s narrow toilet coverings, which totaled more than $30,000 in labor, or approximately $600 per seat. The media had a field day when it became public. President Reagan said, “We didn’t buy any $600 toilet seat! We bought a $600 molded plastic cover for the entire toilet system.”

For me, this piece of Washington folklore reminds me that when faced with a big project, you can spend a lot of money on little things if you’re not careful. We had heard stories of couples who spent ungodly amounts on invitations or a hotel’s cake-cutting services. Our friends who had already gone down this road made it clear that we needed to track every dollar we spent.

Kristin and I had to establish a strict budget and commence planning from there. Because I had been stripped of my wedding play-calling duties, I decided I’d focus my attention on getting us organized and managing our finances. Having been a member of corporate America for the better part of the last decade, I did what any high-powered executive would do to get his numbers in order. Hire an accountant? No. Create an Excel spreadsheet.

At the 1979 Cannes Film festival, 3½ years after initial filming for the movie began, acclaimed film director Francis Ford Coppola premiered his Vietnam War epic, Apocalypse Now. It was a pet project for Coppola, who felt at the time he had earned enough creative capital through his success with The Godfather that he could make the most thought-provoking film of his career. What Coppola wasn’t prepared for was what’s now known as one of longest and most arduous production periods for any film. In a press conference that week in Cannes, in a brief moment of honesty and drama, Coppola described the effort it took to make his vision a reality: “We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane.”
 
In getting ready to plan a wedding, I felt no truer words had ever been spoken.

The day after our engagement, Kristin asked, “What colors do you envision for our wedding?” Colors? We don’t need no stinking colors! It felt like something I should have an answer for but didn’t. It was like the pop quiz in junior high or the “logic games and critical thinking” section of the LSAT. Since I hadn’t done the reading the night before, this was going to be more complex than I anticipated.